


Silver Hands

by kint_sugi



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Politics, F/F, Multi, Outer Space, Protests
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 00:39:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14093217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kint_sugi/pseuds/kint_sugi
Summary: Once there was a miller who had fallen into poverty. One day, when he was hacking at a tree stump, an old man appeared and said, “I’ll make you rich if you give me what stands behind your mill.”The miller assumed the old man was talking about the apple tree out back, so he agreed to the deal. The old man told the miller he would return to take what was his, and then he vanished.The miller returned home, and his wife asked about their newfound wealth. The miller, grinning ear to ear, explained about the old man and the apple tree.But the miller’s wife was horrified. “Our daughter was standing behind the mill, and that old man was the devil!”





	1. Prologue

There is a very particular quality to the silence found in low-earth orbit. 

Hanging in zero gravity many miles above an impossibly wide expanse of the South Pacific, Lena Luthor may have even said it was her favourite kind of silence, so unlike the many shades of it that she’s known in her life. 

The quiet of the empty apartment while she waited alone in vain for a day and a night for her mother to come home, each minute stretched in her three year old mind. The stillness of the Luthor Estate before the last day of Lex’s trial, her shaking hands choosing jewelry to match her court-appropriate outfit. The calm of her corner of the LuthorCorp lab at 2am, hours after her colleagues and coworkers had gone home for the day, steady data entries from the Australian labs keeping her company as the night went on and on. The silences of waiting, of doom, and of loneliness.

On some days those moments were a relief in the constant flow of business meetings, galas, or press conferences. But on others the silence was sharp and ached with the truth that was hidden under the usual roar of the day to day. The truth that she was one apart. 

She had come to understand by the age of 14 that many things she wanted and needed were as if they were trapped behind a thin, cold pane of glass. To be seen by her clearly, but never to touch. She blamed her youth for the moments she pressed her hands against it and allowed herself to hope maybe this time it will let me, maybe this time. 

But the silence of space - that was different.

Floating within the vacuum of it always gave Lena the sense of being dwarfed by the truly colossal nature of the universe and how its endlessness and completeness seemed to swallow up all other truths. Especially her own.

Pain, she had reasoned from her space walks, was simply truth with a lack of context. The trick now was figuring out how to remember that when she had both feet on the ground.

“Found it.” Lena spoke into her comms mic and exhaled heavily in satisfaction, cracking her neck and flexing her hands in the stiff gloves of her suit. “Please make a note that this whole circuitboard is shot, I’ll need to pull it. Also, Jess?”

There was a beep in her ear and the voice of her AI answered promptly over the gentle piano arrangement, “Noted in the log. Yes, Miss Luthor?"

She extracted the offending piece of circuitry and paused to marvel in spite of herself at the work of her father. For all his failings, he was a brilliant engineer. "Change the song please.”

“Any preferences?”

“Something…” Lena chewed the inside of her cheek and rolled her shoulders before rerouting the power source and tugging it experimentally, “less fucking mournful.”

Another beep and Chopin transitioned to David Bowie’s Space Oddity.

“Funny.” Lena mumbled, replacing the service panel on the sedan-sized satellite emblazoned with the LuthorCorp logo, now faded in places after serving as a “Queen” or lead satellite in the vast network of micro-satellite clusters for nearly 2 decades. She holstered her tools and directed her Manned Maneuvering Unit, or MMU, back to her ship. Checking the time on her visor display, she did some quick calculations. 

3 hours, 14 minutes, 32 seconds. That has to be a record.

The airlock of the small L4, the newest generation of single passenger ships produced by LuthorCorp gently sealed behind her as she drifted into the small entry bay. She knew that requesting this ship had been overkill for such a mundane maintenance mission such as this one, but the test flight had to happen at some point. Two birds one stone, right? 

She detached the MMU and arranged it for refuelling, the low machine hum of the ship becoming audible as the cabin came to pressure. The light in the visor of her suit turned blue to indicate it was now safe to remove which she then unfastened at her neck with a click. “Jess, can you please give me a repair report of Cluster 42?” She pushed her helmet away and floated to her pilot’s chair.

“Right away Miss Luthor.”

Her eyes blinking in the stale, dry air of the cabin, Lena watched as the wide central display began displaying the diagnostics of the cluster of 120 grapefruit-sized micro-satellites that provided (or had been, until the solar storm the day prior took them offline) telecommunications services to half of Polynesia. 

She brought her hands to massage the base of her neck, strained from holding it at awkward angles for so many hours, troubleshooting the Queen for what was rendering it inoperable.

Oh, and the launch. There was a pop from the base of her neck and she exhaled with relief. As much as she loves being in orbit, she really, really hates getting there.

“The repairs to the Queen were successful and the Cluster is at full capacity.” Jess reported. The AI displayed green numbers with matching lines extending from the console out on to the glass of the cockpit, encircling the micro-satellites that were now transmitting high speed internet to the Earth’s surface.

Jess then added, “An impressive turnaround time on the task as well, Miss Luthor. Easily a company record and I will be submitting this to NASA for review on an American record as well.”

The corner of Lena’s mouth quirked with a flicker of pride. She couldn’t help but let escape a mumbled, “Take that, Edge.”

Jess’s voice answered, gently confused, as she was programmed to be, “I’m sorry Miss Luthor, can you please repeat your command?”

Lena smirked and pulled the safety harness across her shoulders, shifting in her seat and already looking forward to being on the ground. “What’s the soonest available window for re-entry? I think I’ve had enough recycled air to last me at least a few weeks.”

The green numerals and demarcations faded from the glass and were replaced with outlines for the flightpath Jess calculated, finding a gap in the global satellite network. “The National City terminal is available in 48 minu-“

A metallic, crunching boom sounded through the tiny ship, followed by a whistling that Lena knew could only mean one thing. Hull breach.

The ship was flooded with crimson light as the catastrophic failure alarm rang twice, deafening. Lena scrambled for her helmet, running the probability of a meteor or errant fragment of debris striking the ship at precisely the angle required to pierce it. It was at least 1 in 500,000.

“Fuck, fuck come on.” Lena swore as she stretched for her helmet, floating just out of reach. She released the latch on her safety belt in an effort to snag it, but before she could stretch those last inches, or open her mouth to shout further commands at Jess, the left side of her ship blew wide open. The force of the air being pulled from the ship tore her from the cockpit, sending her helplessly spinning into space.

It almost seemed a graceful thing to be ejected from the L4, once consuming silence swallowed the sounds of alarms and whooshing of escaping air and fevered, panicked swearing. Almost.

Debris struck Lena as she spun, tearing holes in her suit and cutting wide slices through the soft flesh beneath. The pain was dampened by terror as her brain turned over the reality that without her helmet she had approximately fifteen seconds before she lost consciousness. She was certain that Jess was able to transmit an SOS to the nearest Station immediately after the breach, but she knew that even the quickest, closest of them wouldn’t be able to get to her in time.

This couldn’t be it.

Her flight training had taken over immediately, her lungs already empty of air that would have otherwise forced them to collapse, sending air bubbles into her bloodstream and robbing her of precious seconds of consciousness.

Her sight dimmed as the nothingness of space began to reach into her, freezing and boiling at once. Lena found herself twisting to orient herself, almost instinctually, to catch just one more look at the Earth. Of home.

It’s funny, the things that occur to you when you’re facing the end. For Lena Luthor, as the blackness took her, she found herself wishing that she had found more time to swim in the sea, and that she supposed that this, this end to a life that never quite felt quite like it was hers, was somehow fitting.

And then she glimpses it as her eyesight fades; blue, magnificent and sparkling.

***

Lena woke with a start, limbs flailing and face streaked with tears. 

Her lungs filled gratefully with the musty air of the modular office she slept in, springs creaking as she swung her legs off the couch, her shoulders shaking with silent sobbing. It had been six months since her last flight, and somehow despite her perfectly safe record of repair missions, she had the same recurring dream at least twice a month since then. 

Her therapist had said it was likely to do with her brother. Lena didn’t return for a second appointment.

Lena kicked at the blanket tangled around her legs and pulled at her baggy shirt, soaked with cold sweat and sticking to her. She supposed that she was lucky that Yasir, her research assistant, had made his way home despite his threatening to stay all night if Lena was going to. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m on call and I’d rather be here if I need to head out into the field.” She had said, setting up a makeshift bed on the sagging couch in the corner of the trailer that held their research equipment, computers, and empty cages. “I promise I’ll call if anything interesting happens near the site. Anything bigger than a fox, I swear.”

He swivelled his chair and refocussed back on his screens, squinting at geomatics data that had come in earlier that day, “I’m not leaving.” 

“Alright!” She climbed onto the couch, and Jess began the soundtrack of delta binaural soundscapes she had fallen asleep to since she was 8. “Suit yourself, Yasir."

Lena saw a blinking light out of the corner of her eye, realizing that it was her watch blinking with a notification. She cleared her throat, “What is it Jess?"

The voice of her AI came from her wrist, “A drone recorded two large heat signatures on the north side of Gregoire Lake. They are consistent with adult moose. Should I start your car?”

A fluttering of excitement sprang up unbidden. Since the big spill in 2023 it was rare to see one moose in this area, never mind two.

She took four deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. She wiped her eyes, and stood.

“Yes, please. Thank you."


	2. Chapter 2

In the midst of a small stand of balsam fir just off the service road, Lena found telltale swipes of incisor markings that could only mean one thing: the drones hadn’t malfunctioned. At least one adult moose had _definitely_ been here. 

While she fought against the bulk of her parka to pull her phone out and angle for a quick photograph, she noticed similar markings at about waist height on an adjacent tree. Two. 

“Jess, are the heat signatures still in range?” She captured several images of the markings on both trees, carefully inspecting the ground for signs of droppings or tracks that she could document. She hoped that Yasir hadn’t slept through the barrage of texts that she had sent while she was on her way to the site, but like herself, when Yasir did find time to sleep when he wasn’t on 36 hour shifts at the office, he tended to sleep like the dead.

“Yes, Miss Luthor. They are 850 meters to the northwest. Should I send in a team to collect the specimens?” 

Lena frowned. “That won’t be necessary.”

It was one of the deterrents her mother had taunted her with when Lena had first mentioned her adding Northern Ecology to her growing list of majors for her suite of bachelors degrees.

“I seem to recall you never having dealt well with blood, Lena.” She had said, her words biting. “Remember that unfortunate bit of roadkill you had such trouble dealing with on our nice family trip to Anchorage? You weren’t able to sleep without nightmares for weeks.” 

“Mother, she was 7.” Lex had droned, and Lena had sent a small smile at him across the table.

Her stomach soured. The memories her mind served up still hadn’t caught up to the reality of Lex’s madness and betrayal. 

She dropped her phone back into her pocket and crouched down to brush away the thin top layer of snow that had fallen and settled that afternoon. Something real, something alive had stood here, despite the last open-pit mine in North America that was pulling out tonnes of black tar each day not 10 miles away.

It had been the purchase of the mineral rights and the announcement of the development that Lena first felt the sting of surprise of what her brother was capable of. 

“You have to be fucking kidding me.” Lena had walked straight into Lex’s office, finding him standing at his desk, his phone to his ear.

“I’m going to have to call you back.” He ended the call. “You can’t just walk in here like that, Lena. In this building we’re colleagues” Even his tone sounded like her father's.

She ignored him, pressing on. “An open pit mine? What is this, 2007?”

“It’s a perfectly viable project.”

“We passed peak oil twenty years ago, Lex.” He exhaled heavily and searched Lena’s face before his attention was stolen away over her shoulder. She turned in time to see Superman’s face disappear from the screen, adoring faces of citizens of Metropolis watching his progress across the sky.

“You’re either family and have the responsibility of unwavering support with the accompanying privilege of walking in the office of the CEO as and when you like, or you’re an employee with the freedom to do whatever you like in your free time outside of LuthorCorp facilities and you make an appointment like everyone else.” His voice was coarse. “Choose.”

Despite the parka, the cold began to sink into Lena’s bones as she checked nearby trees for further evidence of the moose that had been there. She regretfully began to make her way back to her car, requesting Jess set a route for the office via the nearest grocery store. Documenting the incident would take until daybreak, and Yasir had finished the last of the coffee that afternoon.

“Would you like me to send your order ahead?” Jess asked through the car speakers as Lena settled herself, grateful for the heated seats.

“No need.” Lena answered, pulling her tablet from her bag to begin capturing notes during the journey. “I just need the coffee, I’ll pop in quickly."

As the car began to pull up the service road, winding through the trees, she saw the flickering of campfires in the distance. 

Lena remembered the day the first protesters had arrived. It had been not long after the news had broken that LuthorCorp had begun operations, having forwarded the short news stories to Lex herself, with the subject line “This is just the beginning”. Lex had laughed during their Hyperloop journey from National City to Metropolis the next day. “Lena, it’s September in Canada. It will be thirty below by Halloween. This is the beginning _and_ the end.” Secretly she had hoped he was right.

But instead he was arrested a month later, and the camp tripled in size over the week of his court proceedings. While Lena spent every second of those 7 days trying to uncover evidence that there had to be a mistake (this was _Lex_ ), her mother had been playing politics with the board, securing the votes to keep the mine open.

It had been in the return car journey from that board meeting that Lena had made the calls necessary to reassign herself to northern Alberta to monitor wildlife around that very same mine. If, bizarrely, this hole in the ground was a symbol of something to Lex, to her mother, and now to the world still reeling from the Luthor fall from grace, then she would be right there to make sure that nothing worse happened there.

The decision felt like the right one, even if the camp doubled in size once the public found out that the youngest Luthor was now there. No one had bothered to report in what capacity she was there, and she didn’t correct them.

The car pulled smoothly in front of the grocery store. “Shall I park while you’re inside, Miss Luthor?"

Lena chuckled, noting the nearly-empty parking lot around them as she stowed her work and stepped out of the vehicle. “It’s 3am on a Tuesday, Jess. I don’t think anyone will mind if you wait right here.”

She had quickly found the tea and coffee aisle and picked up her usual bag of coffee, realizing that she hadn’t known that it had been the most expensive kind by a wide margin. It explained why Yasir seemed to live for the stuff once he noticed that there was a seemingly unending supply of it. 

Lena started to wander the aisles, revelling in the simple departure from the routine she had developed. Home to the office, office to home. The occasional field work usually done alone.

She had put a word to the feeling months ago and had been pushing it down ever since. But when she saw a woman, about her age but blonde and dressed in heavy work wear walking up the aisle towards her, her attention on the selection of pasta sauces, Lena was filled with the exact feeling she had when she was 18 and had travelled to visit the apartment she had shared with her mother: the pain of loss that had somehow been forgotten, now remembered.

The one time she had been this far north before, she had been with her father. He was doing some surveying of the area and had taken her along. It was one of a handful of times she had him to herself, and she felt far older than the 9 year old that she was, being asked to check over the math that had been done by his team. 

“Do you see how the land rises and dips, Lena?” He had said, speaking through the microphone on the headsets they both wore, pointing to the horizon as they flew in a small airplane low above the forest. “Those ridges? You see how they’re like the ones you see at the beach? That’s because it used to be an ancient shallow sea bed millions of years ago. It's called scale invariance. No matter how big or small something is, the effect is the same."

And like a tether had jerked Lena back to her body, she started. The blonde woman was looking at her expectantly, with wide, blue eyes that seemed familiar. Had she said something?

“Sorry?” Lena said hoarsely, blinking quickly, realizing her eyes were wet and her hand was empty, her bag of coffee laying on the ground at her feet. 

“I asked if you were okay?” The woman asked, bending quickly to pick up the coffee, handing it to her and pushing her glasses up her nose. “You look like you’re lost.”

Lena chuckled hollowly, hating the irony and trying to shake her embarrassment.

“I mean, I guess it’s kinda the middle of the night and you’re in a grocery store buying coffee and you look like how that would feel.” The woman said quickly, her eyes widening as if realizing something she said had been rude, and continued even more rapidly, “Not that you look bad! You look great. Especially for being at the grocery store in the middle of the night!” 

Lena stared.

“Because, y’know, it’s a strange time to be shopping. And you looked like...” Her rapid speaking slowed to a halt, with a seemingly herculean effort, before closing her eyes, cringing. “I’m sorry.”

Lena quirked her eyebrow. “For picking up what I dropped and asking if I was okay?” 

“For the babbling.” The woman said, gesturing to her mouth with both hands. “My sister says it’s a lot sometimes, and again it’s in the middle of the night and you’re buying coffee and it’s a-“ 

Lena laughed, the sound surprising her with how foreign it felt. She wondered how long it had been since she had truly laughed. 

It had been a long winter.

The woman pushed her glasses up her nose again, looking nervous, a small crinkle forming between her eyebrows.

“It's a strange time to be shopping?” Lena offered.

The woman smiled, looking relieved, letting out a laugh herself. “Yeah.”

Lena tilted her head, marvelling at the easy concern the woman showed for her, a complete stranger. “Well thank you for asking, but I’m quite alright.” 

The woman nodded, her ponytail bouncing. “Of course.”

“Well, thanks for the,” Lena lifted up the coffee, and made to turn to leave.

“Oh, no problem.” The woman chuckled, waving it off. “Have a good night. Or day.”

Lena smiled and turned, and as she was striding back to her car, her watch vibrating to confirm her purchase of the _extremely_ expensive coffee, she thought seriously about taking a vacation. 

In the distance she heard the rumbling of the drums from the protester camp before she stepped into her car. 

Maybe another time.

“Let’s go, Jess.” 


End file.
